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Front coverPerformance andCapacity Themes forCloud ComputingSelecting workloads for cloudcomputingPlanning for performance andcapacityMonitoring a cloudenvironmentElisabeth StahlAndrea CoronaFrank De GilioMarcello DemuroAnn DowlingLydia DuijvestijnAvin FernandesDave JewellBharathraj KeshavamurthyShmuel MarkovitsChandrakandh MouleeswaranShawn RaessKevin Yuibm.com/redbooksRedpaper
International Technical Support OrganizationPerformance and Capacity Themes for CloudComputingMarch 2013REDP-4876-00
Note: Before using this information and the product it supports, read the information in “Notices” on page v.First Edition (March 2013)This edition applies to IBM cloud offerings in general. Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2013. All rights reserved.Note to U.S. Government Users Restricted Rights -- Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP ScheduleContract with IBM Corp.
ContentsNotices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .vTrademarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viPreface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viiThe team who wrote this paper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viiNow you can become a published author, too! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xComments welcome. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xStay connected to IBM Redbooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xChapter 1. Introduction to cloud computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.1 About cloud computing and performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.2 Business roles and service level agreements in the cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.2.1 Business roles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.2.2 Service Level Agreements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.3 Cloud scope and openness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.4 Cloud service paradigms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.5 Cloud responsibilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.6 Designing for cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.6.1 Architecture and designing for cloud . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.7 Cloud performance and scalability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.7.1 Scenarios, use cases, KPIs, and measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .122234567899Chapter 2. Cloud computing workloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.2 Cloud workloads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.2.1 What is a workload? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.2.2 Does it run in a cloud or on a cloud? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.2.3 What workloads are fit for cloud?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.2.4 Workloads are not applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.3 Ultimately how will cloud serve IT needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2.4 Smarter industry example: Enterprise cloud solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .131414141515161717Chapter 3. Performance testing for cloud computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.2 Testing the cloud management platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.2.1 Cloud management platform performance use cases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.3 Application performance testing on cloud infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.4 Process for application performance testing on cloud infrastructure . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.4.1 Black box approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.4.2 Grey box approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.4.3 White box approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3.5 Determine the responsibilities of who does what . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21222222232427272727Chapter 4. Monitoring for best practices in cloud computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.1 General monitoring concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.2 Effective monitoring practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.2.1 Performance and capacity planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4.3 Differentiated services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3132323334 Copyright IBM Corp. 2013. All rights reserved.iii
Chapter 5. Capacity management for cloud computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.1 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2 Model and size cloud capacity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.1 Capacity planning business objectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.2 Capacity modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.3 Cloud consumer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.4 Cloud provider. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.5 Planning for a higher consolidation ratio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.6 Single / multi-tenancy and service depth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.2.7 Capacity sizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.3 Monitor, analyze, and report capacity usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.4 Supervising tuning and capacity delivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.4.1 Root cause analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.4.2 Restoring service and SLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.4.3 Tune . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.4.4 Increasing resource allocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.5 Producing and maintaining the capacity plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .5.6 Determining the need for capacity planning for cloud computing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .353638383940404143454549494949505052Chapter 6. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 556.1 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56Appendix A. Key terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Appendix B. IBM Tivoli Unified Process (ITUP) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Appendix C. IBM Tivoli tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Tools for virtual environment capacity planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Tools for distributed infrastructure monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Physical environment capacity planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ivPerformance and Capacity Themes for Cloud Computing61616162
NoticesThis information was developed for products and services offered in the U.S.A.IBM may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in other countries. Consultyour local IBM representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area. Anyreference to an IBM product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that IBM product,program, or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program, or service that does notinfringe any IBM intellectual property right may be used instead. However, it is the user's responsibility toevaluate and verify the operation of any non-IBM product, program, or service.IBM may have patents or pending patent applications covering subject matter described in this document. Thefurnishing of this document does not grant you any license to these patents. You can send license inquiries, inwriting, to:IBM Director of Licensing, IBM Corporation, North Castle Drive, Armonk, NY 10504-1785 U.S.A.The following paragraph does not apply to the United Kingdom or any other country where suchprovisions are inconsistent with local law: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATIONPROVIDES THIS PUBLICATION "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS ORIMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT,MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some states do not allow disclaimer ofexpress or implied warranties in certain transactions, therefore, this statement may not apply to you.This information could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically madeto the information herein; these changes will be incorporated in new editions of the publication. IBM may makeimprovements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described in this publication at any timewithout notice.Any references in this information to non-IBM websites are provided for convenience only and do not in anymanner serve as an endorsement of those websites. The materials at those websites are not part of thematerials for this IBM product and use of those websites is at your own risk.IBM may use or distribute any of the information you supply in any way it believes appropriate without incurringany obligation to you.Any performance data contained herein was determined in a controlled environment. Therefore, the resultsobtained in other operating environments may vary significantly. Some measurements may have been madeon development-level systems and there is no guarantee that these measurements will be the same ongenerally available systems. Furthermore, some measurements may have been estimated throughextrapolation. Actual results may vary. Users of this document should verify the applicable data for theirspecific environment.Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from the suppliers of those products, their publishedannouncements or other publicly available sources. IBM has not tested those products and cannot confirm theaccuracy of performance, compatibility or any other claims related to non-IBM products. Questions on thecapabilities of non-IBM products should be addressed to the suppliers of those products.This information contains examples of data and reports used in daily business operations. To illustrate themas completely as possible, the examples include the names of individuals, companies, brands, and products.All of these names are fictitious and any similarity to the names and addresses used by an actual businessenterprise is entirely coincidental.COPYRIGHT LICENSE:This information contains sample application programs in source language, which illustrate programmingtechniques on various operating platforms. You may copy, modify, and distribute these sample programs inany form without payment to IBM, for the purposes of developing, using, marketing or distributing applicationprograms conforming to the application programming interface for the operating platform for which the sampleprograms are written. These examples have not been thoroughly tested under all conditions. IBM, therefore,cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs. Copyright IBM Corp. 2013. All rights reserved.v
TrademarksIBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of International Business MachinesCorporation in the United States, other countries, or both. These and other IBM trademarked terms aremarked on their first occurrence in this information with the appropriate symbol ( or ), indicating USregistered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Suchtrademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBMtrademarks is available on the Web at http://www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtmlThe following terms are trademarks of the International Business Machines Corporation in the United States,other countries, or both:developerWorks Global Business Services Global Technology Services IBM SmartCloud IBM Power Systems PowerVM POWER Rational Redbooks Redpaper Redbooks (logo)Smarter Commerce SPSS System x Tivoli WebSphere The following terms are trademarks of other companies:Intel, Intel logo, Intel Inside logo, and Intel Centrino logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of IntelCorporation or its subsidiaries in the United States and other countries.ITIL is a registered trademark, and a registered community trademark of The Minister for the Cabinet Office,and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.IT Infrastructure Library is a registered trademark of the Central Computer and Telecommunications Agencywhich is now part of the Office of Government Commerce.Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.Windows, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, othercountries, or both.UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the United States and other countries.Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.viPerformance and Capacity Themes for Cloud Computing
PrefaceThis IBM Redpaper is the second in a series that addresses the performance andcapacity considerations of the evolving cloud computing model. The first Redpaperpublication (Performance Implications of Cloud Computing, REDP-4875) introduced cloudcomputing with its various deployment models, support roles, and offerings along with ITperformance and capacity implications associated with these deployment models andofferings.In this redpaper, we discuss lessons learned in the two years since the first paper waswritten. We offer practical guidance about how to select workloads that work best with cloudcomputing, and about how to address areas, such as performance testing, monitoring,service level agreements, and capacity planning considerations for both single andmulti-tenancy environments.We also provide an example of a recent project where cloud computing solved currentbusiness needs (such as cost reduction, optimization of infrastructure utilization, and moreefficient systems management and reporting capabilities) and how the solution addressedperformance and capacity challenges.We conclude with a summary of the lessons learned and a perspective about how cloudcomputing can affect performance and capacity in the future.The team who wrote this paperThis paper was produced by a team of specialists from around the world working at theInternational Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie Center.Elisabeth Stahl is Chief Technical Strategist for the IBM Systems and Technology Group andhas worked in systems performance for over 25 years. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree inMathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and a Master of Business Administrationdegree from New York University (NYU). Elisabeth is an Open Group Distinguished ITSpecialist, an IEEE Senior Member, and member of the IBM Academy of Technology.Andrea Corona is an IT Architect with international customer experience in multipleindustries on analysis, design, implementation, testing, and tuning of complex ITinfrastructures, mainly focused on Performance Engineering and Cloud Computing. Sincejoining IBM in 2003, he has held a number of different positions including field technicalsupport for mainframe sales. He is currently responsible for strategy definition, design ofperformance testing processes, and tools for the cloud environment of a large Italiancustomer. He is co-author of IBM System z Strengths and Values, SG24-7333 and auniversity lecturer in Italy. He holds a master's degree in Electronic Engineering from theUniversity of Cagliari.Frank De Gilio is a Distinguished Engineer from the IBM World Wide Client TechnologyCenters with a global focus on client enterprise infrastructures. He is the IBM System andTechnology Group's Chief Architect for Cloud Computing. He has authored a book aboutJ2EE security and a number of whitepapers about Infrastructure design and management.He is a regular presenter at user conferences and a number of IBM-sponsored venues. Mr.De Gilio holds a number of patents in the system software, Internet, security, andinfrastructure management fields. Copyright IBM Corp. 2013. All rights reserved.vii
Marcello Demuro is a Certified IT Architect with extensive experience in performanceengineering and system integration engagements. His expertise is in the areas of J2EE andVery Large DB, performance tuning, and capacity planning. In recent projects, he applied hisskills in cloud oriented projects, designing a private cloud solution, based on the IBM cloudproduct, for the largest Italian utility. He also worked on a cloud performance managementproject for the new cloud infrastructure of a major Italian integrated energy company.Ann Dowling is an IBM Senior Certified IT Specialist and IBM Certified Consultant with over29 years of delivery and pre-sales technical experience with IBM in various disciplinesincluding capacity planning, process architecture, performance engineering, and ITaccounting. During the first 15 years of Ann’s career she was a performance analyst andcapacity planner in support of internal IBM and outsourced customers. Ann then moved intoconsulting with a focus on ITIL process design for Capacity Management. She was lead onoffering development and innovation in the areas of IT Service Management and IT ResourceOptimization. Ann then joined the Performance Engineering team with Systems Engineering,Architecture, and Testing services. She then resumed her career focus on PerformanceEngineering and Capacity Planning with the Performance Management & Testing Servicespractice. Ann is currently a Technical Solution Owner in the IBM Global TechnologyServices Service Delivery Center of Excellence. She helped launch and co-lead thePerformance & Capacity Community of Practice and is now an active Core Team member.Lydia Duijvestijn is a senior IT Architect and Performance Engineer in the Global BusinessServices organization of IBM, The Netherlands. She is one of the co-leaders of the IBMworldwide Community of Practice for Performance & Capacity. She led a large number ofengagements with customers in the area of design for performance, performance testing, andperformance troubleshooting. Two of the most recent performance-related internationalengagements concerned the largest bank of Russia, based in Moscow, and a large bank inthe Nordics, based in Stockholm. She was a speaker at IBM internal as well as externalconferences about subjects related to IT architecture and performance. She led the IBM teamthat published the technical paper “Performance Implications of Cloud Computing” in 2010.Avin Fernandes is a certified IT Technology Architect with over 25 years of experience andcurrently leads the Performance Engineering COE (Center Of Excellence) for Canada as partof the Performance and Testing Practice. He is also a world wide core team member of thePerformance and Capacity Community of Practice (CoP) providing leadership both internallywithin IBM and externally to academia in support of student research and thesisdevelopment. As part of this worldwide P & C CoP, Avin has led projects in SOA PerformanceEngineering and System Capabilities Assessments. Avin started his career with Air Canadaas a Programmer and worked his way up to a Manager of Systems Development. Avin joinedIBM when Air Canada outsourced their systems to IBM. Avin has functioned in many rolesincluding chief architect for the development and implementation of Air Canada's existingreservation system RESIII and more recently as the Test Manager for Rogers EnterpriseCloud PAAS solution, which is currently being implemented.Dave Jewell is a Performance Engineer for the Systems Engineering, Architecture, and Testorganization in IBM Global Business Services. Since joining IBM in 1978, Dave has held anumber of positions in application development, testing, performance analysis, andperformance engineering. He has been involved in performance work for clients in multipleindustries over the past 20 years.Bharathraj Keshavamurthy is a Performance Architect for Enterprise Solutions fromBangalore, India. He works with a software group and has over five years of experience inPerformance Engineering of IBM cross brand products and mainly in WebSphere application integration areas. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering from the University ofRVCE, Bangalore, India. His areas of expertise include performance benchmarking of IBMproducts, end-to-end performance engineering of enterprise solutions, performanceviiiPerformance and Capacity Themes for Cloud Computing
architecting, designing, and capacity sizing solutions with IBM product components. He haswritten and posted many articles onto IBM developerWorks pertaining to PerformanceEngineering and also in international science journals.Shmuel Markovits is a Performance and Capacity SME within Strategic OutsourcingDelivery in Australia. He has over 10 years of experience within performance and capacityareas and more than 30 years overall in the IT industry. He holds a degree in Science andElectrical Engineering from the University of NSW and was a Research Fellow and Visitinglecturer in the University of Technology in Sydney. His areas of expertise include Performanceand Capacity analysis in technologies, such as Windows, Intel, VMware, UNIX, andnetworking. He lectures on Telecommunication Management techniques, virtualization, andnetwork technology areas. He has published in academic areas about Telecommunicationstopics, such as Information modelling for Telecommunication Management. Prior to that heworked in software development, testing, and deployment.Chandrakandh Mouleeswaran is a Technical Consultant for the System Technology Groupin the IBM India Software Lab. He has over seven years of experience in the PerformanceTesting and Engineering field. In his current job, he is responsible for enabling ISVapplications on IBM platforms and consulting for performance testing, benchmarking, serverconsolidation, and creating sizing solutions on IBM Power Systems , System x , andStorage.Shawn Raess is a Program Director for Cloud for the World Wide Client Centers and is apracticing Cloud Architect specializing in data center networking. He is an IBM professionalwith over 30 years of experience working within the IT and Telecommunications industries.Shawn held many positions at IBM ranging from technical, marketing, business development,sales, and project management. He has multiple external networking certifications and holdsexternal credentials with the Project Management Institute (PMP) and the Building IndustryConsulting Service International (RCDD).Kevin Yu is the IBM Software Group Industry Solution's Smarter Commerce PerformanceArchitect. He has 14 years of experience in the IT industry. Kevin worked on applicationservers, enterprise commerce, and database products. He led multi-disciplinary teams tosolve critical customer situations and guided many to achieve new records in transactionvolumes and sales on their busiest online shopping days of the year. His current role is to leadthe creation and refinement of performance roadmaps and strategies for The SmarterCommerce solution.Thanks to the following people for their contributions to this project:Mike EbbersInternational Technical Support Organization, Poughkeepsie CenterDavid ChallonerIBM United KingdomAnindya NeogiIBM IndiaRichard RaszkaIBM AustraliaSpecial thanks to Dr. Erik Meeuwissen from TNO Delft, The Netherlands, for providing thevisualisation of the cloud SLA tree in Figure 1-2.Prefaceix
Now you can become a published author, too!Here is an opportunity to spotlight your skills, grow your career, and become a publishedauthor—all at the same time! Join an ITSO residency project and help write a book in yourarea of expertise, while honing your experience using leading-edge technologies. Your effortswill help to increase product acceptance and customer satisfaction, as you expand yournetwork of technical contacts and relationships. Residencies run from two to six weeks inlength, and you can participate either in person or as a remote resident working from yourhome base.Find out more about the residency program, browse the residency index, and apply online at:ibm.com/redbooks/residencies.htmlComments welcomeYour comments are important to us!We want our papers to be as helpful as possible. Send us your comments about this paper orother IBM Redbooks publications in one of the following ways: Use the online Contact us review Redbooks form found at:ibm.com/redbooks Send your comments in an email to:redbooks@us.ibm.com Mail your comments to:IBM Corporation, International Technical Support OrganizationDept. HYTD Mail Station P0992455 South RoadPoughkeepsie, NY 12601-5400Stay connected to IBM Redbooks Find us on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/IBMRedbooks Follow us on Twitter:http://twitter.com/ibmredbooks Look for us on LinkedIn:http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home &gid 2130806 Explore new Redbooks publications, residencies, and workshops with the IBM Redbooksweekly sf/subscribe?OpenForm Stay current on recent Redbooks publications with RSS ance and Capacity Themes for Cloud Computing
1Chapter 1.Introduction to cloud computingCloud computing represents another evolutionary step in the continued virtualization of ITsystems. As computing power and network bandwidth increased with advances in circuitdensity, packaging, and design, IBM and other vendors continue to provide new ways ofsharing computing resources between increasing numbers of users and their computingworkloads. Where virtualization creates the appearance that each user or workload hasdedicated computing resources while the actual physical resources are being shared, cloudcomputing is concerned with the dynamic allocation of these virtual computing resources andthe delivery of IT services over the network in response to rapidly changing business needs.The key terms that we use in this paper are defined in Appendix A, “Key terms” on page 57. Copyright IBM Corp. 2013. All rights reserved.1
1.1 About cloud computing and performanceCloud provides benefits throughout an organization, offering reduced time to market, whichenables a first mover advantage and standardization that provides reduced complexity in thedata center. This leads to improved operational efficiencies and offers the client reduced,predictable annual costs. Other benefits were realized in areas, such as self service, servicecatalog, automatic provisioning and deprovisioning, and capacity flexibility. A cloud providesclients with features, such as disaster recovery, security, and metering, which enable clientsto reduce costs, increase standardization, and improve business continuityWhat changed regarding performance and capacity management with the introduction ofcloud computing? In one sense, what did not change is that the principles of performanceengineering and capacity management still apply. We must still plan, design, implement, tune,and manage our IT solutions with performance and efficiency in mind, if we are to delivergood performing, cost effective solutions to our users and customers, particularly since theunderlying physical resources are pooled and shared. Alternately, everything changed sincewith cloud computing it takes only minutes to allocate new virtual environments automatically,a task that previously required days or weeks to allocate manuall
This IBM Redpaper is the second in a series that addresses the performance and capacity considerations of the evolving cloud computing model. The first Redpaper publication (Performance Implications of Cloud Computing, REDP-4875) introduced cloud computing with its various deployment models, support roles, and offerings along with IT
